


Amends

by beautys_punishment



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Jedi Rey, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Not Related, Leia Dies, Post-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Rey Needs A Hug, so much was left unsaid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 16:30:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14060922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautys_punishment/pseuds/beautys_punishment
Summary: After Leia's death, Rey tugs on her connection with Kylo Ren. Some truths are told, some bridges are built but not enough to fill the chasm.





	Amends

When Leia dies, two years have passed since Crait, the last time she saw Kylo Ren, on his knees, alone in the mess he'd made for himself. In the past few weeks she has been tempted more and more to tug at that string connecting them. That feeling, that someone is occupying a space in her head, in her bones, in her blood, never really went away, even though she firmly shut him out. And now, seeing Leia slowly go out from this world softened her resolve, remembering that no matter how much they wronged her, she would have liked to see her parents one more time. To say goodbye and feel like that’s a closed chapter. But that was a romantic notion that had no place in this war. Ben was no more. He was Supreme Leader of an oppressive, totalitarian regime. Leia was dying, with little awareness of where or who she was nowadays.

But on the day it happens, her own grief and loneliness over the loss of this surrogate mother of sorts makes her reach out to him. And it’s easy, she knew it would be. He’d always felt close, lurking, waiting to be let in, sometimes raging, sometimes pleading, sometimes tentative, never really absent, always on the fringes. When they appear to each other, they both stand up, silent in the momentous occasion of seeing each other again. He’s not wearing all black and his hair is a bit longer now and she’s surprised to see he doesn’t seem haggard as she would have expected, his eyes are tired but he looks quite healthy. The scar she'd given him is just a fine line on his cheek but as soon as he materializes in the room, his familiar everpresent sadness permeates the air around him, stretching beyond his grief of losing his mother. 

He’s closed to her though and she realizes his feelings aren't pouring into her as they used to in their past connections. He doesn’t try to wedge in anymore, but just is in the connection. They look at each other in the absence of sound of the connection, their breaths too loud, heartbeats too erratic. She has lost some of the youthful roundness of her face, but she looks stronger, nourished in that way that doesn't only have to do with access to food, but with being cared for. Her hair is longer now, twisted in a braid that looks quite similar to something his mother used to know how to do. Perhaps Leia taught her, like she would have the daughter she never had. 

‘Why today?’ he asks. ‘Is it more for your benefit, or mine?’

‘I...don’t know’ she replies, uncertain, unmoored. He’s quiet, subdued and she feels awkward and embarrassed in the silence, having expected him to be angry and accusatory, maybe to reject her and push her away for once. But he's calm, no sharp feelings traverse the connection. 

‘I felt her light going out for months now. I think I sensed her illness ever since I felt her again in the Force after Crait. I didn't first understand why she felt so different, but I figured it out in the end, I knew it was coming.’ he looks around, unseeing, lost.

‘That doesn’t mean you were ready for it.’ she voices what he didn’t say and the responding look on his face is confirmation enough. There's no possible amount of preparation that would make the grief of today lessen.

‘Perhaps. But, if we’re lucky, we all get to outlive our parents. It’s part of life.’ he turns his back to her, standing stiffly, fully aware of the implications of what he just said.

Her face sours at the memory of a red lightsaber piercing a man through the chest and her disbelief and grief that a son would do that to a father that loves him. But she pushes that memory back. Not today.

‘She wanted to see you. She didn’t remember about Han…’ her voice catches in her throat. ‘...she only remembered Ben.’

He turns to briefly look at her, calm, sad, desolate ‘I am Ben, Rey.’

‘She didn’t remember me.’ she whispers, tears rolling down her cheeks. They stand like this for some time, their joint sorrow pulsating, weaving in the Force.

‘It was a mercy then’ he says very quietly and she feels her anger rising, thinking he means not remembering her, but a short intake of air and a broken sob from the other side of the room lets her know he’s lost in his sorrow and regrets. 

‘The past is dead now. You got what you wanted.’ she says, not knowing if to comfort or hurt him or maybe both.

He turns, unshed tears in his eyes, accusation as well. But most of all, guilt. ‘That is true, to an effect. But you’re wrong in thinking I got what I really wanted.’ he says, his face open, eyes soft, that forlorn look he does so well. Rey bristles at the assertion.

‘You mean me? You think you wanted me?’ she asks, derision and disbelief in her voice. He looks away. ‘You said you are Ben now. What happened to Supreme Leader Kylo Ren?’ 

‘I can’t look backward, Rey. Only forward. I can’t really mend the people I have broken, I can’t bring back the ones that are gone. I can only look forward.’

‘That is quite a change from the last time we talked.’

‘That day feels like a fever dream to me. I slowly shed all of my tethers, thinking they would free me: the Jedi way, my parents, Snoke and then you cut me off. When Luke showed up, I wasn’t free, I was unhinged. It felt like I was flying through hyperspace straight into a black hole. Too fast, too slow.’

‘And what? You are changed now? Just because you’re wearing different clothes and you don’t blow your shit up at every turn?’

‘Rey, you came to me. I have nothing to prove to you.’ he bursts, his eyes trained on her face, a flash of that old temper coming to the surface, but it fizzles out as soon as it was ignited. ‘As much as I dreamed and wished for it, I can’t be Darth Vader, I can’t exist only in the Dark side. It took me a while to understand, but the Force itself prevented me from it by creating the bond between us. Fighting against it would have just meant damning myself to a tortured existence. As much as it made me unsane, killing Snoke gave me a freedom I did not know before. To choose to pick up the gauntlet from my tormentor and continue their work - I couldn’t do that. Kylo Ren was Snoke’s man and they are both gone.’

He changes tracks and comes closer to her, adamant now.‘I was mad at you for a very long time. For reaching for the lightsaber, for leaving me to die. For shutting me out. But, I understand why you did it. The Force or my own brain made me rewatch that scene for months in my sleep and after some time, I understood why you thought you needed to do that.’

She feels quite disarmed. She didn’t expect him to launch in this confession of sorts on the day of his mother’s death. She thought she would find anger and hurt, but instead her own anger and hurt comes to the surface. ‘How could you put so much on me? You knew me for such a short time! And you expected me to what, fall in love with a murderer? Be your wife?’

‘That’s not what I asked! I offered you a place at my side, it didn’t come with strings attached.’ 

‘Oh, please. Remember that in those days, this bond was quite new and neither of us knew how to really hold back. I saw quite clearly what you wanted.’ They both look down at her words, too many treacherous pathways for them to take.

‘There is a difference between what I’d hoped and what I expected of you to give.’ he grinds out through his teeth rejection anew on his face. ‘I offered you a place where you could belong because you were shouting that need with every breath you took, but I get it. You were there to just save your friends and perhaps Leia’s son, but wanted nothing to do with me.’

‘That’s not true!’ she raises her voice, waving her arms around, as if to dispell his words on the air.

‘I can say the same thing about seeing clearly what you wanted, Rey. I let you see me, know me, but you didn’t want it. You wanted to be the hero that saved the Resistance, that brought back Ben Solo around your little finger. The last fucking Jedi. You call me a murderer, but your hands are not spotless either. Beyond all your best intentions, you were quite selfish yourself.’

‘Because you are such a giver.’ she says bitterly.’You offered something and snatched it back the minute it was refused, with such resolute conviction. Went on to try to kill me and everyone I cared about and almost succeeded.’

He looks away again, the feeling of being trapped in this circular conversation draining all the little energy he has left to cope with today and suddenly she can see his tiredness clearly, in the slump of his shoulders, the news leanness of his body and the lines that time has forged on his face. ‘I didn’t know you were on that piece of trash ship, they told me you took Snoke’s shuttle. I wasn’t sure if my mother was still alive after the Raddus bridge was destroyed. I didn’t feel her die, but couldn’t feel her anymore either. I didn’t know my uncle hadn’t really come to finish me off. That he hadn’t really come at all. I - as you very well put it, completely blew my shit up and didn’t even know to say which was up or down. I attacked my general in front of his command, I missed all of the possible signs that Luke was not there. I missed you and Mother in the Force.’

‘This doesn’t change anything. This war is still going on.’

He walks towards the wall, as if trying to get out of a room he’s not really in. As expected, it's quite ineffective. 

‘Why Han and not Leia?’ her question tears through his attempt of evading the situation.

It’s his turn to be surprised at the non sequitur. He stares at her blankly and looks away.

‘Help me understand.’

He takes long to reply, his breath uneven for a time. ‘I could say it was Snoke and partly it was. He fed my resentment for him leaving us, for him being afraid of my Force abilities and my unstable temper until it became this big, ugly thing. The scapegoat for all that went wrong in my life. For ending up at Luke's, alone, exiled almost. And it worked, for a very long time, it worked. But there’s an expiration date for blaming your parents for your life and even then I understood...he was just not equipped to deal with this. With me. It was Han because we were estranged and from the two, if I’d had to make the impossible choice of killing one to let the other live, it had to be him.’

‘But you didn’t have to kill either! He came to bring you back and you killed him in cold blood.’

‘That’s what I believed, Rey! Deep, in my core. I believed there was no other way but to kill him. I did not see another way but the way my master laid out for me. I thought there was no way back or out, that Snoke was invincible. I’d lived with him in my head for all of my life. There was no edge between me and him, not in those days. His will, his intent was mine.’  
He continues his train of thought, knowing that going down the path of replying to her accusations would just lead them both on a very slippery slope. ‘I didn’t know there could be another way. Until I'd done it and I felt how far from the truth I was in thinking the act would make me stronger. Until you showed up and made me learn that I am not as powerful as I think. That nobody can really own the Force or have dominion over it. That, objectively, I didn’t have such a difficult life. That sometimes, the greatest power is resilience.’

‘It was foolish of me to want you like that, but I didn’t know how not to. Your light was so bright, you were so powerful and defiant. And I misunderstood you. Your fierceness didn’t come against all the odds that were presented to you, it came because of them.’

Tears are falling from her eyes again and he briefly thinks that she can't remember if they ever had a conversation that didn't end with her crying. It always amazes him, her ability to let her emotions out like that. ‘I didn’t want the galaxy, I wanted to feel like there was someone out there that cared, that in all those years, there had been someone, there there could be someone. I wished it so much.’ she whispers.

He steps closer to her, uncertain, wanting to touch something of her, but knowing that giving or asking for gestures of comfort isn’t possible. 'I know' he tells her, and he does. He felt this from the first time he entered her mind on Takodana.

‘I lived alone too, Ben. I was abandoned as a child in a fucking junkyard. I’ve gone hungry, ill, cold, but I understood wrong from right.’

‘Oh you did, did you? You thought the Resistance was your deliverance. That the Republic was such a gift to the Galaxy. By whose ignorance and incompetence do you think children like your ended up indentured to the Galaxy’s scum and worked to death? In all those years on Jakku. What did the Republic ever do for you?’

‘And I’m sure you did it all for the poor, helpless children. Especially those in the Hosnian system, no?’ He turns his head at her words and closes his eyes, as if she had slapped him. And she might as well just had. They're far from being able to talk this out and today, from all days, this conversation would just go round and round.

‘There is no way, no path, no action, nothing I can do to atone for my part in that. And I know it.' he spits out, his composure crumbling. 'Please, I wish to be alone now’ he says, the weight of it all too heavy for this day, a plea in direct contrast to the last time they were face to face and he asked her to stay. He knows that, if she wants to stay, she can. In all this time of him trying to get through her defenses, he never had to learn how to keep her out.  
She looks down, embarrassed, knowing she is infringing on his grief today, demanding and yes, selfish. That's not what she intended. No matter how much happened between them, she knows him enough that she can’t deny him his humanity. But she still feels bitter and confused anew by this man. The floodgates have opened and she knows this is not the last conversation they'll have. Her resoluteness at keeping him out is weakened.

Before the connection breaks off and he starts feeling her fade he calls in a quiet, hopeful voice ’Was it good to see me, Rey?’

'Good?' she blinks and has to consider his question for a moment ’No.’ 

For a moment they’re both suspended in the no man’s land of their connection.

‘Goodbye, Ben.’


End file.
